Destiny 2 Season 11 Heroic Contact Guide, Plus How Umbral Engrams Work

Season 11 of Destiny 2's Year 3, the Season of Arrivals, is here. With it comes a whole new set of loot to chase, as well as a new public activity to compete in with other players. That activity is Contact, and it can be found on Io and Titan--although like last season's Seraph Towers, it won't be in both locations at the same time. It requires you to take on waves of enemies and to stay alive to succeed.

Contact is similar to past activities, like the Seraph Towers or Escalation Protocol, with a slight caveat--it takes some cues from Gambit, as well. Your goal in Contact is to collect Motes of Darkness from dead enemies and deposit them in a bank. But there's a little more going on in the event than first meets the eye. Here's everything you need to know to win at Contact and advance this season.

Collect Motes

Your primary goal in Contact is just like in Gambit--kill enemies and pick up the Motes of Darkness they drop. When you collect them, you'll want to take them to the bank in the center of the public event area in order to deposit them. You'll need to completely fill the bank with Motes four times in order to complete the event, and each wave will get tougher as you go. You're only able to carry a maximum of 10 motes, and it's not clear yet whether you get bonuses for depositing more Motes at once. But as in Gambit, you run the risk of losing all the Motes you're carrying if you die before you deposit them.

Make It Heroic - Look For Blooms

As the event wears on, you'll start to see pools of orange light showing up near one of the three spots where enemies spawn. You'll also see the message "Concentrated Darkness coalesces nearby." If you approach those pools, you'll be attacked by a Champion enemy. Kill the Champion, and you'll be able to grab an orange orb from inside the pool of light--a Darkness Bloom. These are pretty much powered-up Darkness Motes, giving you a big boost of about 20% in filling up a bank. That means Blooms should be your primary focus whenever they come up. Try to coordinate with other Guardians to take down Champions as quickly as possible, because they can also cause chaos during the event, especially in later levels.

Blooms are also key to triggering the Heroic version of Contact. You'll need to find and deposit all of them as you work through each level of the event. That means you can't complete filling up the bank without depositing the Blooms, or you'll fail to make it Heroic. If you trigger the Heroic version, you'll fight a tougher boss at the end.

Protect The Bank

Between each level of filling up the bank, Taken enemies will appear and attack it, causing the bank to get shut down and running your timer. You need to clear the Taken enemies as quickly as you can during these periods, so that you can get back to collecting Motes. It's worth noting that Champions can also seal your bank at key moments, which is an added reason to prioritize them whenever they show up if you want to succeed.

Take Down The Boss

If you manage to fill all four levels of the bank, you'll trigger a boss Taken who will show up and attempt to shut down your efforts for good. This is a pretty straightforward boss fight, except that the enemy you'll be facing will be pretty high-level. Hit it with your strongest attacks and Supers, but be sure not to be overwhelmed by the other enemies that will spawn nearby. Weapons like Divinity are useful for concentrating your team's fire and boosting their damage to take down the boss as quickly as you can.

In the Heroic version of the event, you'll face a special boss after filling up the bank with Motes of Darkness: the Taken Pyromaster, Taken Monstrosity, or Taken Howler. Which boss you'll face is on a weekly rotation, so you'll want to work through Heroic versions of all three to complete all the season's Triumphs. With the Taken Pyromaster, a Blight will spawn periodically around the battlefield, which provides the boss with an unbreakable shield. You'll need to destroy the Blight so you can damage the boss.

Focus Umbral Engrams At The Prismatic Recaster

In the Season of the Arrivals, you'll get a new, Darkness-infused type of engram in random drops, called an Umbral Engram. They're not decoded by the Cryptarch as usual, but at a new machine near the Drifter called the Umbral Decorder. Contact is all about getting gear to power up this season's reward dispenser, the Prismatic Recaster. Found near the Drifter, this machine allows you to "focus" Umbral Engrams you find, which determine what kind of rewards they drop. At the earliest level, you can focus Umbral Engrams to become either weapons or armor from the Season of the Arrivals, rewards from Seasons 8-10, or Gambit and Reckoning weapons. You get three free engram focuses per week to start; after that, you'll need to spend a new currency called Altered Element to focus additional engrams.

You also find another new currency, called Twisted Energy. This is used to upgrade the Prismatic Recaster itself, which gives you more control over what rewards you receive and how good they are. Like the Rasputin Bunkers last season, the more you upgrade the Recaster, the better your rewards from Umbral Engrams will be--so make sure to complete the Recaster's bounties and earn as much Twisted Energy as you can.